Collisions Ruin This Game

This is the best racing sim IMO but it’s utterly destroyed by the collisions. For two reasons. The safety rating system doesn't reward safe drivers since it penalizes every collision equally and doesn’t consider who’s at fault. It should mimic the real world rules. The safety rating required for a sever doesn’t filter out the bad players. The rating can also be achieved by just grinding it up in SP so it’s not indicative of how a person will behave online in a real game. No matter how high this rating is at the first turn all the cars are going to pile into each other. Secondly the collision physics is overdone with the cars flying off the road with every bump as if they’re made out of paper. One bump to the fender even at slow speeds sends you out of control. That’s hardly realistic at all and it spoils the gameplay.

 

It has been discussed many, many times here in many other topics. Your view is very simplified and there's much more behind collisions and safety system...

It's simply impossible to decide who's at fault in many situations, even real life stewards need hours or days sometimes to make decisions and are not free of mistakes. The safety system rewards safe drivers, if you are "safe driver" you should have no problem with staying at SA above 95 or just at 98/99 (and the "safe driver" counts for the whole pack, avoiding collisions, reading other drivers and situations, adaptation, choosing servers and opponents to fight with, too, not only "I did not crash anyone"). You have bonus points for finishing the race, pile-ups are calculated in its own way, etc.

It does. It works fine. I haven't got a problem with that since the game release. But don't expect a bunch of good players under SA 90 (random number, I have no data on that; but SA 70, for example, can be pretty bad). But even SA 99 won't save you, if someone is having a "bad day" and you're in the way...

It depends on server quality and player's connection quality, if you are talking about multiplayer. The high pings and bad connections will always result in bad collisions - the calculations might be inaccurate and exaggerated, and with that it gets really bad really fast. All my worst experience with collisions is connected to bad server or internet issues on my side, or on other's players side. With collisions, it's calculating or predicting, both ways have its cons and pros. But technology moves on, let's wait and see what will the ACEvo bring.

It all depends on the situation. Is it exaggerated because of the above factors? Or is it consequence of the lost aerodynamic grip, lost tire grip, traction control setting, car weight balance, etc... Or just lack of the driving skills to save the car from spinning?

If you are having problems with SA or servers - search for leagues, communities, find your place and pace, avoid random servers, work on your higher SA in single player mode. The ACC might be a pretty rough experience, if you just want to drive with random people here and there, sadly.

 

Oh I’m sure this has all been discussed ad nauseam, little point in going on and on about it. Yes it would be easy to have a better system. How is getting smashed from behind my fault? If I recall a basic interpretation of these rules is that the car behind needs to give room to the car in front. The safety system doesn’t need to be that exact in order to be better. You talk about a safety rating of 90?! Good luck getting it that high when the other players online are constantly ruining your score. You could behave perfectly well and still get dinged by every noob who just ploughs into you. You’ve got no control over that. Ok frankly if you want a 90 SA rating all you need to do is grind in SP with a bunch of AI and follow them around for hours.
And yeah I get it that cars at the edge of their grip will go flying with the slightest touch because they’re already on the edge. Like this

I’m talking about slow speed corners here. Someone will always ram you in the first turn when the pack is moving slowly. It’s funny to try another “arcade” title and see everyone behaving better and the game not ruined right at the start. ACC could stand some improvement here.

 

Sorry, but where are you racing, then? What are your go-to servers, leagues, communities? Your experience, with all that "always" and "constant" things, sounds like there is something terribly wrong. Is that the whole story?

I'm at 98/99 since I got there, and it's like that in years. I'm racing on random servers, too. No problem with staying at high SA or going right back to SA 99 (still on multiplayer, I'm almost not using single player), even after big crashes on some drink'n'drive servers.

 

This is my experience on every server. Maybe the solution is to just grind my SA rating to 90+ in SP but see how that’s just artificial? Every other noob player can just do that too so what relevance does the SA rating really have?

 

That discussion is as old as Minorating* is.
Bottom line: it's not possible, there is no reliable way to determine who is at fault in a specific situation, so penalizing both drivers equally is the only sensible thing to do.
The rating is based on the fact that this will just happen more often to bad drivers than to good drivers. Which is also what my experience with Assetto Corsa and Minorating was back in the day.

If you get a lot of hits, then maybe you're more often at fault than you might think. After all, one's subjective few of things is only that … subjective.

From what I read from Minolin, that's on purpose as well.
It can always happen that someone will have a bad day and thus the rating drops. They should be allowed to redeem themselves without having to go through carnage servers.
It's hard to believe that some just wanting to troll will go through that just to get into a better server to crash everybody, that's too much effort for a troll.
Instead, you can see the single player rating improvement as practice to have a better go next time you join a multi player server.


Bot honestly, as I said before, all of those discussions have been there multiple times already. Trust Minolin. He has been doing this for quite some time now, he has seen all (or at least most) of these discussions and knows all the arguments.
All in all he had done an amazing job with Minorating and continues to do so in ACC.


*the original Assetto Corsa mod the safety rating is based on

 

That's a very vague statement, we won't get anywhere from here.

If every server is the problem, then you might be the part of the problem, too.

 

Ok maybe ACC netcode is not perfect but you also need to take a look at the good sides of it: it allows people from all over the world to play together on the same server without major issues, it allows for big grids, multiclass racing and driver swaps, has dynamic weather and day-night cycles, it is mostly very stable (it is used for 24-hour races) and you can join any server in a few seconds. Overall a pretty solid experience and it doesn't ask for a monthly fee. I think ACC netcode is one of the reasons many people choose ACC for sim racing.

Another thing: you need to manage your expectations. If you hope to jump on a public server and have the cleanest racing you will always be disappointed. Public servers are meant for casual racing with no strings attached. There will be collisions, drunk driving, road rage. This is what you should be ready for. If you want cleaner racing you need to look somewhere else, for example LFM, or some league. In those places you can find either race stewarding or the possibility to file a report against someone, which honestly is the best way to deal with racing incidents as it is almost impossible to automate the decision on who's at fault.

 

How is it my fault if someone hits me from behind? Why would the car in front be given a penalty for this? That makes no sense.

 

Perhaps the game should include qualifying/instructional races that you need to complete before playing online. Specifically with this instruction here:

 

Earning the rating in SP permits players to act recklessly online knowing they can just boost their rating back up offline. If MP was the only place they could earn the rating they’d behave better there.

 

Quoting myself: "too much effort for a troll"

 

I don’t imagine most players are malicious but generating a score offline against the AI just doesn’t seem like a good indicator of someone’s ability to play against real opponents. A genuine score developed by actually playing online would be more valid.

 

Again, it's thought to be practice. If your rating drops, basically what ACC tells you is to go back to single player and practice, before you race online again.
I don't see anything wrong with that. And if they are not good enough and crash too often, they'll be forced to go offline (or to bad servers) again soon enough.

If you restrict players' scores to online racing, then players with a bad rating would be restricted to open servers only, where they'll likely be more prone to adding up points. Getting out of that is much harder, yes.
But it's also hard to justify. Or only if you assume that chance of players improving are very low.
Also, assuming this scenario, how would people actually achieve a good rating in the first place to race online? You'd have to go through open servers and I'm pretty sure you'd complain about that, right?

I think the more sensible way is to have it as it is currently, where you can set your ratings also in single player mode.
For the scenario that a player's rating drops quickly when racing online, the algorithm can take into account whether this happened for the first time or whether it happened repeatedly, meaning that the second, third, ... time your rating could regenerate more slowly due to that. (This is actually something that Minorating was not able to do, because the data was deleted after a relatively short amount of time. 3 months, iirc. With ACC they surely have better options to keep track.)

 

But the servers are all bad because players know they can always repair their rating offline. I don’t notice much if any difference between them no matter the SA requirement. If MP was the only place they can earn this rating they’d all behave better. And the ACC system of punishing both players equally just doesn’t provide useful data, it invalidates the whole system.
I won’t pretend this is going to change but it’s a glaring flaw in an otherwise great game. I’m amazed playing another arcade style title where this is done like I’m describing and the results are very clear to see. Despite the fact that it’s a gamey game the players behave better and collisions don’t instantly destroy the race as soon as it starts. It’s so obvious where the problem lies with ACC.
Easy solutions:
- Only penalize the player at fault, essentially that means the one behind by more than half a car length. And only for severe contact. Don’t penalize every player equally for every little touch. So much of that goes on the data from that is really irrelevant.
- Only allow ratings to be earned online
- And finally make the collision physics a little sturdier so every small touch doesn’t send the cars off the road.

 

I would think that if a car is at its limit in a corner, all it would take "to send cars off the road", is a "small touch"

 

Oh yeah. Hey here’s a first corner pileup IRL
I think ACC is a bit more extreme than this though.

 

Not sure I get your point, SharpeXB

 

No collision problem if you are a good driver; still these obsolete speeches? closed this thread! I've been hearing this talk about iRacing since 2008

 

How does a good driver avoid getting hit by someone behind them? That happens constantly even if you keep to your line. You can be as careful as possible like the “how to follow a car” guide above and you’re still going to get smashed by the player behind you.
This type of contact shouldn’t penalize the car out front.